‘Tis the season for brands to solicit the LGBT community’s affection and hard-earned money while also funneling funds to LGBT non-profits and obtaining oodles of free advertising with hashtag social media campaigns as well as posts like the one you’re reading right now!

Pride branding has come a long way as a new generation of queers rise the ranks of various corporations, help start new companies, and infuse them with aesthetics that go beyond a basic rainbow splash on an otherwise unremarkable t-shirt. More brands than ever are using models of color and trans models to promote their tie-ins, and spotlighting local community activists rather than leaning on reliable celebrities.

A quick sidenote: every June we’re bombarded with press releases about Pride branding tie-ins — but never do these companies actually want to buy advertising from us. They just want free coverage of their partnerships. So, that’s my disclaimer: a great way to support LGBTQ community health is to put money into independent queer media, and I wish these companies did that.

I’ve loosely grouped the collaborations into possibly arbitrary groups based on vague criteria, none of which I feel very strongly about. Please note the rankings are mildly influenced by a company’s positive history with the LGBTQ community but are not influenced by the company’s history or reputation in other areas, or by the politics, religious affiliations or lobbying activities of its leadership team. Undoubtedly most corporations are, in some way, evil, and have literally zero integrity. This is a fact of Capitalism.

But also, not everybody can get a job that pays their bills at a company that has 100% integrity, and it’s clear that some of these places have good queer people, or maybe even just good queer allies, working within them, doing their best to Robin Hood it and spread the wealth and amplify diverse voices. Even the gay non-profits many queers disparage are employing really excellent people too — many of whom read this website and participate in this community and contribute financially to its existence. THIS IS ALL SO COMPLICATED.

The Okay, Sure

Puma

Puma’s $95 Clyde Pride Sneakers are “designed to represent all that you stand for,” which is smart because it’s good to wear shoes while standing. Puma’s Clyde Pride Pack also includes a tank top, tees, socks, hat, and a $40 fanny pack. The sneakers are definitely some of the season’s most aesthetically pleasing Pride-themed kicks, but appear to be a stand-alone effort for the brand — there’s no mention of an awareness campaign or non-profit partner.

The Pretty Good!

Gap Inc: “Wear Your Pride”

Coming in as the least-exciting brand tie-in with a non-profit partnership is my former employer, Gap Inc, with points docked for its relatively uninspired pride tees buried deep within their respective websites and its eGiftCard donation cap.

The Pride Line is basically rainbows, “Love is Love,” “Love Wins,” etc. On the upside, Gap Inc and the United Nations Foundation announced a new partnership for Pride that aims to raise awareness and funds for UN Free & Equal, which promotes fair treatment for LGBTI people globally, with 30% of Gap’s Pride T-Shirt net sales and $2 from every Pride-themed eGiftCard (up to $25k) going to the organization. The Old Navy tees, however, appear to mostly just benefit Old Navy.

Dr. Martens: Wear Your Pride

Listen I was a teenager in the ’90s and I will never love any boot like I love my Doc Martens, but don’t the Pascal Pride boots kinda look like they were ripped off the set of RENT? You should buy them anyhow, or the Rainbow Pride Docs, ’cause $5 from the sale of each boot goes to The Trevor Project and Doc Martens stores nationwide will be hosting Pride events all summer long. What will happen at these events? It’s a mystery!!! I hope it involves girls in boots!

The Quite Good

American Eagle Outfitters: #WeAllCan

100% of the sales from American Eagle’s Pride line benefits the It Gets Better Project, with options including t-shirts, boxer-briefs, boybriefs, a rainbow beaded choker and a hat. It’s being rolled into their #WeAllCan campaign, which reminds human beings that they can “be anything” and “do everything,” which is, I believe, the American Dream. Even though the American dream is dead, this Gay Trippin tank is a fun tank top you could wear on your body if you wanted to.

American Eagle is promoting their partnership by encouraging customers to take the It Gets Better Pledge and upload a video to Itgetsbetter.org, and also to take pics of themselves for AE to use on their Times Square billboard and NYC Pride March float. They’re also providing a New voices Filmmaker Grant to an emerging LGBTQ filmmaker during NYC Pride’s OutCinema festival.

Converse “Yes To All”

Converse’s Pride collection includes 37 different shoe designs on its Chuck Taylors and at least half are pretty damn hot. In honor of the first-ever Pride Parade — New York City, 1970 — a section of the line is distinctly ’70s-inspired, while others include customizable rainbow-soled high-tops and low-tops blazed with bright gradients, flags, spots/dots and stars.

Net proceeds go towards the It Gets Better Project and Miley Cyrus’ Happy Hippie Foundation, “two organizations committed to empowering LGBTQ youth around the world.” The #YESTOALL hashtag encourages customers to feel free to be who they are, “whatever your gender, orientation or identity.” However, the animation for this particular project is wild and certainly in some way dangerous?

The Extra Good

These companies get extra points for their history with the LGBT community, inclusive media campaigns that feature real queer humans and/or turning a solid section of their retail store into a Gay Rave every June.

This year’s Pride product tie-in is fairly simple — a $125 limited edition KAM shoe adorned with a rainbow stripe and designed to honor LGBTQ Pride Month “in support of the Human Rights Campaign.”

The brand’s overall Pride initiative is a bit more ambitious: gay photographer Levi Jackman Foster shot the campaign for Kenneth Cole, which features actual! queer! people! in New York. A mural of Foster’s photographs will hang out in Williamsburg on the corner of Wythe and North 15th Street for the entire month of June. But the true highlight of it all is that their Courageous Class Pride Edition includes Grace Manger of Everyone is Gay / The Parents Project!

Nike: BE TRUE

Apparently Nike’s journey into LGBT allyship began with a few employees’ “grassroots effort” in 2012 to introduce some Pride-inspired designs into the company line using the NIKEiD system. Boldly suggesting that rainbows are not, in fact, the only “gay symbol,” the 2017 BE TRUE Collection pairs it with “other prominent symbols of Pride, including the color pink and the triangle, with Nike innovations and the encouraging message, RUN FIERCE, printed onto the shoes’ sock-liners.” Nike apparently has already given “approximately $2.5 million in financial and in-kind support to LGBTQ causes” and earned kudos from the HRC for its equality campaign, launched earlier this year, led by Nike LGBT Network Leader Robert Goman.

They’ve been shining a spotlight on local queer folks too, like this interview with skater Lacey Baker. In New York, Nike profiled two QPOC, Sara Geffrard of “A Dapper Chick” and Danielle Cooper of “She’s a Gent,” to illustrate “how staying true to one’s truth transcends the culture of sport and style.” Their #BETRUE Home Run, a weekly running meetup, will offer a special 4.8 mile route that traces New York’s LGBT history. In Portland, where many Nike shoes are manufactured, 50 sneaker bikes from BIKETOWN, the local bike-share system, will be wrapped in limited-edition rainbow colorways and ridden by Portland community leaders at their Pride Parade.

Target: Take Pride

Listen we all shop at Target don’t front, it’s the hipster Wal-Mart, they’ve been sponsoring gay shit from the jump, and so thus of course every year, Target goes slightly more bananas about Pride, and the gays go slightly more bananas about Target. This year Target is truly the most Extra. There’s no way they’re gonna sell all this stuff! What happens to it in July? I’m concerned about waste!

Target customers are also invited to use its #takepride hashtag when posting selfies taken in Target stores.

The Greatest

These companies get extra points for exceptionally inventive & informed design choices and/or featuring a diverse array of actual queer people in their Pride campaigns.

Hollister: Safer For All

Non-Profit Partner: GLSEN

Hollister’s partnership with GLSEN stands out for its relatively original t-shirt designs and clear, original focus: making all schools safe spaces for all students, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. 100% of their Pride T-Shirt Collection proceeds go to GLSEN. On the Hollister website, queer students share their visions for a safe space in a video series. These ads are running in 500+ Hollister stores and feature student council leaders from GLSEN.

Everlane: Human Together

Everlane, one of the few companies on this list truly committed to ethical production practices (and one of the few companies on this list to reject Autostraddle as an affiliate, BUT IT’S FINE), began its 100% Human campaign in January, routing $5 of each purchase to the ACLU and, later, re-branding the shirts in “millennial pink” for International Women’s Day with profits going to women’s rights organizations. Now, the 100% Human focus is PRIDE. Look at these faces!

Through its #HumanTogether video campaign, Everlane seeks to raise $100k for the Human Rights Campaign while also soliciting content from its fans they’ll use to create their grand masterpiece #HumanTogether campaign video. Models for the campaign include trans actress Hari Nef, photographer Lee Bullitt, actress Rowan Blanchard and painter/model Miles McMillan. The campaign declares “Gay. Bi, Lesbian. Queer. Trans. Non-Binary. Whoever you love. However you identify. We’re all 100% Human.”

MeUndies: Celebrate Yourself

MeUndies, an ethical company who I truly think needs to advertise with Autostraddle, is donating $1 from every pair of their Pride underwear sold to the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Their campaign involves lesbian YouTube stars Ally Hills and Stevie Boebi, singer/songwriter/actress Hayley Kiyoko, Olympic athlete Gus Kenworthy and Queen of Bounce Big Freedia — a diverse and refreshingly female-focused line-up of human beings. Their “celebrate yourself” campaign and video series is about “feeling proud from the inside out.” MeUndies partners include a whole bunch of your favorite YouTubers, like Gaby Dunn and Bria & Krissy.

ETA: MeUndies declined our application to their affiliate program today, which is FINE but also confusing and frustrating!!

Urban Outfitters: Love UO

Urban Outfitters, as a corporation, has a history of being truly terrible. But they’ve clearly got some quality people on their team who know what’s up, as indicated by an refreshingly inventive Pride fashion line and diverse Pride campaign.

The #UOPride line was designed in a partnership with rising Chicago hip-hop artist Taylor Bennet, with all profits going to GLSEN. Bennet’s designs are bubbly and fun, with softened rainbow colors and a beachy Free City vibe suitable for year-round wear.

Levi’s: Fight Stigma

San Francisco based Levi’s gets props for a genuine commitment to the LGBTQ community that began far before such a commitment was even remotely popular, and also for tying its annual Pride collections to historical moments rather than simply slapping rainbows on t-shirts.

In total, Levis has contributed over $70 million US dollars to HIV/AIDS organizations in over 40 countries and supported organizations including the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal. 100% of proceeds from this year’s collection go to the Harvey Milk Foundation and the Stonewall Community Foundation.

Riese is a Jewish lesbian and the 37-year-old CEO, CFO and Editor-in-Chief of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, blogger, fictionist, copywriter, video-maker, low-key power lesbian and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and then headed West. Her work has appeared in nine books including "The Bigger the Better The Tighter The Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image & Other Hazards Of Being Female," magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

I KNOW! it is sad and DOES seem like a natural fit. i can’t remember when we applied but when i checked today to see if we had an account with everlane, it was right there on the list of programs we’d applied to but been rejected from.

usually we can circumvent this by making links through shopstyle, which is a smaller % than a direct affiliate account, but they don’t always have all the products listed there. it’s a great company, i wish they would work with us!

Personally as a trans queer Jew, not a fan of where Urban is on this list seeing their history hasn’t been the best with either communities shared history. Those Holocaust like outfits are really offensive.

from the intro —> “Please note the rankings are mildly influenced by a company’s positive history with the LGBTQ community but are not influenced by the company’s history or reputation in other areas, or by the politics, religious affiliations or lobbying activities of its leadership team.”

UO’s list of “communities it has wronged” is very very long, ours (I’m also Jewish) is only one of them. Incorporating an entire company history into the ranking of any company on this list would turn this post into a month-long process.

These are all big companies with lots of employees, many of whom are just people like you and me trying to get jobs to pay their bills and live their lives. I think it’s great that there’s somebody working at or for UO who pushed them to collaborate with a qpoc hip-hop artist and promote the work of independent qpoc artists for their campaign. That one segment of their otherwise unsavory and enormous business is doing pretty good, and that segment is all I’m addressing in here. UO’s failures have been very public and viral-ready, but other corporations on this list have also committed atrocities or actively participate in them, they’re just less buzz-worthy than offensive t-shirts.

It’s interesting to me that refinery29, teen vogue, buzzfeed, bustle, hello giggles, newnownext, pride, unicorn booty, lgbtq nation, pink news, et al can post fawning pieces about every one of these collabs and nobody bats an eyelash, but we cloak ours in disclaimers and present it jovially and oh my g-d autostraddle how dare you

I am sorry if that is how I came off. I was just saying I am not a fan of where it was on the list because of their past, not how dare you. Maybe the reader base for those other sites aren’t as well versed, diverse, and/or active as autostraddle’s fans base.

i was so excited when everlane unveiled their 100% human pride collection and it was being modeled by actual queer people!!!! (i wish that in 2017 that didn’t make as excited as it did but them’s the breaks)

Riese, I love when you rank/review things. This is so fucking funny: “Nordstrom ominously promises us all that their employees will be popping up at Pride events worldwide throughout the month of June.”

poor riese, she’s out here pouring her life into running this amazing and invaluable website for us and being fully upfront about the ways in which nothing is perfect etc AND YET ppl are mad that she didn’t like singlehandedly bring down capitalism? that she’s implicated in immoral structures of exploitation? WE ALL FUCKING ARE. WE ARE ALL COMPLICIT AND WE ALL WANNA BUY GAY SHIT.

just like, I wish ppl could leave their outrage at home for one hot second.

I appreciate the thought but I’d rather watch Lost and Delirious on loop for 48 hours than put most of this on my body. And how’d you miss the opportunity to shoutout AS merch, come on, Riese! Do capitalism better!